


A Man of Principle

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 09:52:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: A child has been reported missing by her father, and is then found dead





	A Man of Principle

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story

A Man of Principle

by Bluewolf

The seven-year-old was reported missing by her father about six on Thursday evening - he said he hadn't been too worried when she didn't arrive home from school before that, because she often went home with a school friend so that they could do their homework together, but she was usually home not too long after five. When there was no sign of her by 5:30, he checked the street to see if she was coming, then phoned the friend's house, to discover that that evening she hadn't gone there. In fact, their daughter said Mandy hadn't been at school that day. So, understandably seriously worried by then, he phoned the police.

***

Mandy's body was found two days later, hidden among bushes in the garden of a derelict house on the outskirts of Cascade, by three teenagers - fourteen-year-old twins Harry and Wat Martin and their not-quite-thirteen year old younger brother Jerry - who were walking their dog. They said the dog had been pulling on its leash trying to get into the garden, so they'd decided to check and see what it was.

They took one look, guessed immediately that what they saw was a body, not a mannequin of some sort, dragged their dog away and ran home; told their parents what they'd seen, and their mother immediately phoned the police.

***

The forensic report was the kind that offered a bereaved parent at least a little relief.

It seemed that whoever had killed Mandy had grabbed her as she made her way to school, strangled her and dumped her body. There was no sign that she had been beaten up at all and she hadn't been raped.

But it did leave the question of why. _Why_ had someone grabbed the child and killed her? It wasn't even a case of a pedophile grabbing a child, then hearing someone coming and just killing her to keep her from screaming for help. Even if that was what had happened, it wouldn't have been the first time that a pedophile killed a child and raped her after she was dead.

The case went to homicide, landing on the Captain's desk on Monday morning.

Captain Torrance read through the report - or, rather, the non-report ( _child missing, not at school on Thursday, found strangled on Saturday_ could hardly be called a report) and after thinking about it for a few minutes went to see Simon Banks.

"Morning, Simon."

"Jack? What brings you here?"

"Thought I'd give you the joy of a weird case," Torrance said, and grinned at the 'eyes lifted to the heavens' look on his friend's face - 'weird cases' was an old 'joke' between them. "Seriously, it's a nasty one, and I think the only person who has the remotest chance of finding the killer is your '90% solve rate' detective."

Simon looked at his fellow Captain. There was a permanent, though seldom admitted, not even realized by anyone below the rank of Captain, 'competition' between the Captains of the different departments to have the best solve rates in the precinct. For Torrance to give this case to him, admitting that he didn't think Homicide could solve it but that Major Crime possibly could, was a major - well, gift. Or maybe, in the game of one-upmanship the Captains played, it was, despite his long friendship with Torrance, a secret, even unadmitted by Torrance to himself, hope that even Major Crime's top detective couldn't solve this case.

"Warren okay with you passing this on?" Simon asked.

"Yes. I don't think he was sure which department to give it to," Torrance said.

"So what's the problem?"

"A murdered child." Torrance sighed. "Yes, murder automatically goes to Homicide and the murder of a child, unpleasant as it is, can hardly be called a _major_ crime. But Ellison's reputation... I'd rather see your department get the credit than hope one of my men could come up with the answer. Because, frankly, this case... I wouldn't like to be the detective handling it, and that's the truth."

***

When Blair breezed into the bullpen not long before lunchtime, it was to find Jim sitting reading a thin - a very thin - report, his face more than usually expressionless. One look at that face was enough to mute Blair's cheerfulness.

"Problem, Jim?"

Jim looked up. "Chief. Homicide just passed this case on to Simon... who has given it to me. And seriously, I don't think there's any way of solving this."

Blair frowned. "That's... "

"Pessimistic?"

"It's not like you to give up before you've even started."

"See what you think." He waited while Blair put his backpack down beside the desk, hung his jacket over the back of his chair and sat before pushing the 'report' to him.

Blair had thought it very thin; now he realized there was only one page in the folder.

Amanda Crawford, age seven. Mother deceased. Father reported her missing on Thursday night when she failed to return home from school; but she hadn't been to school that day. Her body found on Saturday morning in the grounds of a derelict house just outside Cascade; she had been strangled. The killer had apparently worn gloves; there was no sign of fingerprints on her neck. There was no 'alien' DNA on her body. Her schoolbag was lying beside her - it gave no clues. The only fingerprints on it were hers and her father's. There was no sign that she had been assaulted in any way, other than the strangling.

Blair looked at Jim. "You need to have a look at the garden where she was found."

"I know."

"Okay - let's go there now; then we can stop somewhere for lunch before we come back."

"Somehow, I thought that's what you would say," Jim said.

***

But in spite of everything he tried, straining his senses almost to the point of zoning out, Jim could find nothing in the derelict garden, or the road just outside it, that seemed in any way out of place. There were tire tracks, but they could all be written off as having been left by the police, forensics and EMT vehicles that had been there on Saturday morning. Finally Blair called a halt.

"You're not going to find anything, Jim," he said quietly. "You're not superman. Amanda was left here five days ago. If her killer was wearing - say - a strongly scented aftershave, there might be a trace scent here for you to smell; but he obviously wasn't. If he'd killed her here, there would probably have been some traces of a struggle, but he seems to have killed her somewhere else, come straight in, put her body down and gone away again. It was worth trying, but there's nothing here to find."

Jim shook his head. "There has to be something!"

"And if we'd been called in on Saturday when her body was found, you might well have found something. But the extra time since... Your senses are good, Jim, but they can't pick up something that's no longer there.

"Look. Let's go and have a quick lunch. Then go and see Mr. Crawford. The kids who found her body - they'll be at school, but we can go and see them tonight, though I doubt they'll have registered anything other than a body and 'let's get home, Mom and Dad will know what to do!'"

"I hate feeling that I've failed the kid - and her father."

"I know, Jim; I know exactly how you feel. But if there's nothing for you to find... This killer is really clever."

As they settled in the truck, Jim said, "Chief, what if Amanda is just the first? What if this killer targets more youngsters? Their deaths would be my fault because I couldn't find anything to identify him, stop him... " He started the truck and drove back into Cascade.

"I hear you, Jim, but how many killers actually become serial killers? Not many, and they're rarely identified as serial killers until the third or fourth killing using the same MO. Or maybe more than that because they change that MO.

"A lot of killers only kill once, and often it's domestic - love turned to hate, for whatever reason - "

"Yes, but Chief, a seven-year-old on her way to school? I'd say an opportunist pedophile, but Forensics said there was no sign of sexual... interference. From the forensic evidence she was just grabbed, apparently at random, and killed. No obvious reason."

"And in a way, that's the point, Jim. No obvious reason. But the killer had to have _had_ a reason."

"I know," Jim sighed. He turned into the parking lot of one of Blair's favorite diners. He had never admitted it, but he liked the food there too.

They ate quickly, both anxious to get the coming meeting with Dave Crawford over, and left without bothering about a dessert.

Normally Jim had to be careful to stay inside the speed limit when he was 'on duty'; he was quite surprised to find that he was having no difficulty whatsoever keeping inside the limit as he drove to Crawford's house... and he knew that it was because he was reluctant to face the bereaved father.

He stopped when they finally reached the house - a medium-sized house surrounded by a well-kept garden - and both men climbed out of the truck.  Jim led the way to the front door, and rang the bell.

The man who answered had an unhappy look on his face. Blair threw one glance at Jim, and stepped forward. "Mr. Crawford?"

"Yes."

"Blair Sandburg. I'm a consultant with the Cascade PD. This is my colleague, Detective Ellison - he's in charge of investigating... what happened to Amanda."

"Oh... Come in." Crawford led them into a comfortable-looking sitting room. As he indicated seats, he said, "I was... told... that Mandy's body had been found. That... that she hadn't been assaulted, just... just killed."

"I'll be honest with you, sir," Blair went on. "Whoever took her and killed her... Detective Ellison has one of the best solve rates in Cascade, but we've checked where her body was found, and he's far from sure that we'll catch the killer. He could find nothing that gave him any information at all.

"But we do still have one or two routine questions we have to ask, just to establish a possible sequence of events."

Crawford nodded.

"She left for school on Thursday morning. Was it her usual time, or was she a minute or two early or late leaving?"

"Her usual time. About 8:40 am."

"And did she walk to school, or get a bus?"

"She walked. There isn't a direct bus, and the roads are usually very quiet. It takes... took... her about fifteen minutes."

"And you let her go to school on her own? Although she was only seven?"

"She said if I went to school with her the other children would call her a baby; that all of her classmates made their own way to school."

Blair nodded. "Did she meet up with anyone else on the way?"

"No. None of her classmates live on the direct route she would take. At night she usually goes... _went_ home with a friend who lives nearer the school but not in quite the same direction, and they did their homework together - Mandy was better with English and Judy was better at working with numbers, and if either one was having a problem, they helped each other. Then Mandy came home, and got here not long after five. On Thursday... when she was late... I phoned Judy's parents, and apparently Mandy hadn't been to school that day at all... and that was when I phoned the police."

"Did she ever say anything about always, or almost always, seeing someone - probably a man - when she was going to school? Or thinking that she was being watched?"

"No, never."

Blair glanced at Jim, who said quietly, "Thank you, sir. I don't know that we'll need to bother you again. We'll let you know if we do discover anything, but as my partner said, we're not too hopeful that we'll find anything. This man - at least we assume it's a man - is very clever."

***

When they got back to the PD there was a message waiting for them, asking them to go and see Dan Wolf.

Had he, perhaps found something else? Something that might give them a clue? They turned and went down to Dan's office.

"Dan? You wanted to see us?"

"That child, Amanda Crawford ... "

"Yes?"

"The initial check of her body... I was in the middle of another autopsy when Amanda was brought in, and everything about her case seemed so routine, I left her autopsy to my assistant. It was the first one he'd done without me being there to supervise, so I did a follow-up check of the body this morning, and I'm not convinced that she died just two days before she was found. The tests for temperature and rigor mortis - those don't really change after thirty-six to forty-eight hours, so they fit in with the two-day time scale. But there are other factors; a body lying in the open at this time of year will draw insects. They lay eggs; those eggs hatch and develop surprisingly quickly. The way she was lying, fully dressed, there was very little bare skin visible. Carson took things a little for granted when he didn't see any insect activity on her skin, and believe me I'm not letting him off with it! When I checked, I found some insect larvae in her hair. From their development - I think she may have died on Wednesday rather than Thursday."

"But it was only Thursday that she wasn't at school," Blair said.

"Wednesday night then."

"But her father said she left for school - "

Jim frowned. "He was... I'd say worried - but it was a reaction I'd expect from a man whose daughter had been found dead and who was being questioned, even though they were routine questions."

"Mmm," Blair agreed. "A _'Who killed her and why? Will I be blamed?'_ reaction?"

"Yes... But if she was actually killed on Wednesday night, he lied about her leaving for school at her usual time."

"So he knew she was dead on Wednesday?" Dan asked.

"Seems like it," Jim muttered. "I think we need to go and see him again."

***

"Detectives?" Dave Crawford had a very worried look on his face.

"Some new evidence has come to light," Blair said.

"New... ?"

"The autopsy was done by a relatively inexperienced medical examiner," Blair said. "He wasn't incompetent by any means; his findings were perfectly correct as far as they went. However, this morning the senior medical examiner decided to double-check his assistant's findings, and he believes that Mandy was killed, and her body put in the derelict garden, on Wednesday - "

He was cut off short by Crawford wailing, "Oh, God!" and breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably.

Jim and Blair glanced at each other, then quietly helped Crawford into the house and along the hallway to the sitting room they had left not much more than an hour earlier.

They waited quietly until Crawford regained control of himself. He took a couple of deep breaths, then said quietly, "I loved Mandy's mother very much - almost too much. She... Norah died a little more than three years ago, and during those three years... Mandy began to look more and more like Norah, and the more she looked like Norah the more I missed Norah, and... and... I suddenly realized I was beginning to think of Mandy as a... a... a sort of substitute for Norah, and that... that I could end up...

"I had to keep Mandy safe. Safe from me as well as any other men who might... As well as... if she married someone who loved her as much as I loved Norah - and then she died and left her husband as desolate as I was left... " He swallowed. "I realized that the only way to keep her safe was to kill her. She was asleep when I strangled her - she didn't suffer at all. And now she's completely safe. Safe from me and from anyone else who might want to... " He broke down again. "Loved... her... so... much... "

Jim gave him long enough to pull himself together, then said quietly. "I'm sorry - but... David Crawford - you are under arrest for the murder of your daughter Amanda."

***

At home, over dinner, Blair said quietly, "I don't suppose he'll ever stand trial. He'll be declared 'of unsound mind', won't he?"

Jim nodded. "Yes, I think so," he said. "And I think he'll find comfort in his certainty that he saved her... her virtue. I think he'd decided that all men would find her as irresistible as he was beginning to."

"Because she was reminding him more and more of her dead mother. And that was who he was obsessed with."

"And he knew it - he said it; he 'loved Norah almost too much'."

"A pity he didn't have a sister or a sister-in-law who could have taken Mandy when her mother died," Blair said.

Jim nodded, before saying, "Though he would still have felt that rearing her was his responsibility. Maybe the problem was just that Mandy began to resemble her mother so much. If she hadn't, he probably wouldn't have developed that obsession for his daughter."

"We'll never know," Blair said unhappily. "With his wife dead, he could still have developed that obsession even if Mandy hadn't resembled her at all. His best option would have been to remarry - "

" - which he would have regarded as betraying Norah and his wedding vows," Jim finished.

"Basically a man of principle, but without the flexibility of thought that would make his principles... well, practical. Sometimes holding strictly to principle is a mistake. In this case - if he'd accepted that remarrying wasn't a betrayal of his first wife, he wouldn't have been driven into a situation where the only option he could see was killing his daughter - to 'keep her safe'."

"Because apparently, in Crawford's mind, nothing is safer for a young girl than being dead," Jim agreed.


End file.
